Nearly 31
percent of the candidates fielded by political parties for
Wednesday's third phase poll of the seven-phased Uttar Pradesh
state assembly election have criminal cases pending against them.
This was stated in a report »

New Delhi: At least 128 of the 360 candidates for
the sixth round of Uttar Pradesh assembly polls Feb 28 have
criminal background, a report from a think tank said Saturday. A
total of 210 candidates are billionaires.

This is 36 percent of the total and is much higher than 27 percent
of candidates having criminal background in the last assembly
polls, said an analysis by think tank Association for Democratic
Research (ADR) and its wing National Election Watch (NEW).

About 46 percent of the candidates of the Samajwadi Party (SP)
have pending criminal cases, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 45
percent, the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 29 percent and the
Congress 47 percent.

Out of the 128 candidates with declared criminal cases, 52 are
facing trials in cases like murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping,
rape, robbery and extortion. The SP has 15, the BJP has eight, the
BSP has seven and the Congress has five such candidates.

Man Veer Singh of the Janata Dal-United, contesting from Jewar
constituency, has declared the maximum number of 31 criminal
cases. Of these, 14 are related to murder.

The number of billionaires in the fray has also grown this time
over the 2007 election. A total of 210 candidates, about 58
percent of the total, are billionaires. Just 22 percent candidates
were billionaires in 2007.

Najir Ahmed of the Congress from Agra South constituency is the
richest with assets worth Rs.141.39 crore, followed by Vinod Kumar
of the BSP from Debai constituency with Rs.45.19 crore and Mahesh
Kumar Sharma of the BJP from Noida constituency with assets worth
Rs.37.45 crore.

A month-long showcase, "Dawn Upon Delhi: Rise of a Capital", which
opened at the NGMA late Monday evening, has now recreated the
making of the city of Delhi from the Mutiny of 1857 to the present
day with more than 250 rare documents. Part of this collection
above is an artist's view of early 19th century Delhi.

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